Alberta budget

[mustardman]

Laughing at a Brad Wall ad on tv last nite. He says he's not going to raise taxes like the NDP did when times got tough.

Well I wish he would raise taxes on US and get more than a NICKEL from the potash Regime and oil barons
Instead of P3 deals for schools that will make higher taxes look like pocket change

[fjlip]

Norway is about same population as AB, really curious how their socialist Govs, worked with BIG oil and business, and accumulated all their $$ Billions. Had to tax the resources somehow without killing investment.

[mustardman]

With all the oil Alberta has had since the 40's, there should be No Debt and the Coffers FULL

If the proper royalties were paid.
I can't rent land for $ 10/ acre so why should oil companies NOT pay royalties till they make a profit Or potash co,s pay 5 cents out of a dollar of potash ???

It's no different than what happened to the natives- a boatload of beaver skins for a shiny spoon. wTF!!!!

[stonepicker]

oneoff, alberta in serious trouble? How do you figure that, they're still the richest prov. in canada and have very little prov. debt . If alta. is in serious trouble, where does that leave mb.?

[LEP]

Mustard to get the analogy right. The government would own the land and the only way you could operate it was if you invested about 5,000 an acre to gross 500. Now try to extract a higher royalty and get investment.

The only way Norway was able to get the rates they are was have a crown Corp make the investment, nobody private was willing to risk investment in that scenario. The NDP sat in Sask with high royalty rates on oil expecting private investment but it didn't happen.

So you can lead a horse to water but...

[mustardman]

LEp. High royalty don't work if the province next to you is giving it away for Free
Oil companies LOVE one province Bidding lower than the next ( race to the bottom)
Ralph Klein gave it away for free , how can you outbid that?

[dmlfarmer]

LEP: How does your analogy explain SUNCOR's success? From SUNCOR website: "Since Suncor became publicly traded in 1992, daily oil sands production has increased by 600%.* Over the same period, Suncor's total return on investment has returned 5173%, versus the S&P 500 total shareholder return of 373%.* Our future growth opportunities are world-class, with a compounded annual growth rate potential of 10 to 12% in oil sands and 7 to 8% overall until 2020."

[oldjim]

fjlip: Norway is about same population as AB, really curious how their socialist Govs, worked with BIG oil and business, and accumulated all their $$ Billions. Had to tax the resources somehow without killing investment.

The largest share of the Norwegian oil industry is run by Statoil, a government-owned company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statoil

So their government didn't have to work with big oil, they were (and still are) big oil.

I remember seeing a news report quite awhile back that the head of Statoil was looking at investing in the Alberta oil sands. I don't know if anything ever came of that.

[fjlip]

"In 2007 Statoil bought a large area in the Athabasca oil sand field in Canada after purchasing North American Oil Sands Corporation for $2.2 billion."

[oldjim]

There you go! I got bored part way through and quit reading. I see they also have a stake in the Bakken, which, considering the high percentage of Norsk descendants in North Dakota - sorta keeping it in the family!